Question How do you think buffs/nerfs are decided?

[Eldriken]

I've always wondered this when reading patch notes for games. Some buffs are really fucking unnecessary and it makes me wonder how it was agreed upon. Was it just thought up, not tested and applied? The same goes for nerfs. Some are just as unnecessary as buffs. How do they come to pass, y'know?

Necessary or unnecessary aside, I will elaborate on what I mean by providing some examples.

How was it determined that Jason should get a 6f d1 and left at -2 (I obviously know this is no longer the case, but it supports my question)? Did someone choose to ignore the fact that not every character has a 7f or faster poke and couldn't do anything about it (mainly in the corner) unless they have meter (Unstoppable gave no fucks about this, which made it even worse)?

How did the change to how much stamina you initially use when running get determined? Not saying it was an unnecessary change. I just wonder what the thought process is that causes them to come to that conclusion.

How did it get determined that certain characters' mid should become a high while other characters got to keep their just as stupid mid? Who I'm referring to is clear as day, but that doesn't have anything to do with the question. It just makes me wonder what I've already asked.

Why did Scorpion get a special cancellable b4? Not one other character has this luxury. I'm not saying every character should have this, but why give it to a character at all? What was it about the game at that time that made someone go, "Scorpion should be able to special cancel his b4"?

I could go on and on about certain things, but I feel I've made my point. I didn't pick certain characters because I feel that it's unfair, they were just who I thought of when asking myself this question which led to the thread being made.

I guess what I'm really trying to get at is that I just don't understand how certain decisions are reached when they cause such stupid shit to happen. Were the changes not properly tested before they were solidified?

Feel free to give your input on this. I'm curious what you folks think on the matter. Just keep in mind that this isn't a whining thread. Just genuine curiosity and lots of confusion.

 

[Karma]

By a group of lower class people that nerf the characters they hate and buff the characters they like or barely used (ignore ferra/torr i think), mostly ignoring their fans's suggestion sometimes.

 

[B. Shazzy]

here eldriken multiple choice you decide lul

1. most of the team doesnt seem to actually play the game meaning we get confusing balance

2.they're priority is what looks fun questions later (party game lul)

3 .they dont know what theyre actually doing on the competitive side of creating fighting games and go by causal feel

4. does it make the game look bad/ who/how many people are complaining for buffs/nerfs

5. all of the above

 

[EMPEROR_KNICKS]

Guide on how to Nerf and balance characters by Paulo
Step 1: Go and look at the front page of TYM and see which characters people think are broke
Step 2: then nerf them
step 3: Be as inconsistent as possible, nerf ermacs overhead by 3 frames, that leads into full combos, can be made safe, is a hard knockdown, nerf erronblacks overhead by 8 frames, which had gaps, and was unsafe.
Step 4: Only nerf characters that are placing
Step 5: if a character is bad, give them
A:A 6frame d1
B:Broke plus frames
C: A 9 frame MId
D: Or a mixup
step 6: If a character is top tier (KILL THEM)
Step 7: Make sure you never test these changes or think on how they apply to the meta.








Step : make sure ex puddle in swarm queen is less plus than regular puddle, and have more recovery.Because you know

 

[Indecisive]

I think it depends. They cannot test every little thing. Im sure they do take suggestions from people of the community to an extent to get an idea on things to fix. But certain things they could test like Scorpions cancelable sweep and think its a cool idea and just roll with it.
The kotal b1 thing was needed. An advancing mid that is faster than some pokes is horrible
But i also feel somethings they are just like fuck it lets see how it works.

But some of the inconsistencies are strange. Like jax's command grab not have 2 hits of armor but a lot of other command grabs have 2 hits of armor.

 

[Eldriken]

Guide on how to Nerf and balance characters by Paulo
Step 1: Go and look at the front page of TYM and see which characters people think are broke
Step 2: then nerf them
step 3: Be as inconsistent as possible, nerf ermacs overhead by 3 frames, that leads into full combos, can be made safe, is a hard knockdown, nerf erronblacks overhead by 8 frames, which had gaps, and was unsafe.
Step 4: Only nerf characters that are placing
Step 5: if a character is bad, give them
A:A 6frame d1
B:Broke plus frames
C: A 9 frame MId
D: Or a mixup
step 6: If a character is top tier (KILL THEM)
Step 7: Make sure you never test these changes or think on how they apply to the meta.

This made me LOL. Pretty much nailed a lot of what I was thinking to myself.

 

[Eldriken]

I think it depends. They cannot test every little thing. Im sure they do take suggestions from people of the community to an extent to get an idea on things to fix. But certain things they could test like Scorpions cancelable sweep and think its a cool idea and just roll with it.
The kotal b1 thing was needed. An advancing mid that is faster than some pokes is horrible
But i also feel somethings they are just like fuck it lets see how it works.

But some of the inconsistencies are strange. Like jax's command grab not have 2 hits of armor but a lot of other command grabs have 2 hits of armor.

I agree, Inde. Kotal nor Mileena's b1 needed to be a mid in the current version of MKX. But then you have to wonder why these characters were stripped of that, but a certain character gets to keep a launching (albeit unsafe) special that low profiles everything under the fucking sun. And that crossup jip is just as stupid.

I guess my main issue is how were certain nerfs decided on and other blatantly stupid things completely ignored? I just don't get it.

 

[Dankster Morgan]

I think they go by what mass audiences say to be honest. I think this largely because of how these characters were handled:

1. Sub-Zero: Before the 10/4 patch, he was a mid tier character. He won some, lost some, he was for the most part balanced. But, for some reason a lot of people thought he was bad, probably because he got decimated by the top tiers and seemed butt in comparison to Alien, Mileena, etc... so that's why we have the Sub we have now.

2. Erron Black: Erron was busted as fuck at launch and Sonic did a lot of work with him, but since twitter scrubs don't read patch notes they thought he was still that good. I mean shit, Outlaw Erron Black was top 10 on eventscrubs for fuck knows how long, so people kept complaining, that's why we have the Erron Black we have now.

There are more examples, that's just my observations.

 

[NaCl man]

Pick a character and a move. throw a dart at a dart board. there is your frame data.

 

[Indecisive]

I agree, Inde. Kotal nor Mileena's b1 needed to be a mid in the current version of MKX. But then you have to wonder why these characters were stripped of that, but a certain character gets to keep a launching (albeit unsafe) special that low profiles everything under the fucking sun. And that crossup jip is just as stupid.

I guess my main issue is how were certain nerfs decided on and other blatantly stupid things completely ignored? I just don't get it.

Idk why they let her slide have such an insane hitbox. Maybe cause its been like that since day 1. A lot of jump in's in the game are still really good. Its unfortunate cause they tried to deal with it by attempting to make AA's better/ But AA's were not the issues Jump ins were. I think that had to do with complaints cause most people complained about AA's being bad which they where not that horrible for alot of characters. The issue was the Jump ins being insane. Which phantom hiboxs. Long reach for no reason. etc. Also Derreck and Tyler play Mileena and Kano. So they got to keep them decent.

 

[Eldriken]

I think they go by what mass audiences say to be honest. I think this largely because of how these characters were handled:

1. Sub-Zero: Before the 10/4 patch, he was a mid tier character. He won some, lost some, he was for the most part balanced. But, for some reason a lot of people thought he was bad, probably because he got decimated by the top tiers and seemed butt in comparison to Alien, Mileena, etc... so that's why we have the Sub we have now.

2. Erron Black: Erron was busted as fuck at launch and Sonic did a lot of work with him, but since twitter scrubs don't read patch notes they thought he was still that good. I mean shit, Outlaw Erron Black was top 10 on eventscrubs for fuck knows how long, so people kept complaining, that's why we have the Erron Black we have now.

There are more examples, that's just my observations.

Going by mass audiences would determine who, but not necessarily how they go about it. I'm talking frame data changes for the most part despite some of my above examples. Why change something by X amount of frames that didn't need it and makes almost no difference, but then skip over something entirely that needed to be changed? The process behind the decision making is what boggles my mind the most.

 

[Crusty]

A) List of reasons why certain characters get some unnecessary buffs or unreasonable nerfs.

1) downplaying the character such that they claim to have no strengths and a plethora of weaknesses. The character then flies under the radar and becomes too good.

2) Rampant complaining of a mu that they don't feel like putting a little extra effort in such that said character opposing their character in the first place gets nerfed.

3) Some of the people at NRS have their character changed to their heart's content such that they won't get hit as bad or get an excess of buffs.

B ) List of reasons some of the universal systematic changes came to be:

1) finding a method to level the playing field such that advantages between character to character aren't as great.

2) some of the inherent problems of the game needed a counter-balance such that the risk reward is there now.

3) Other meta's needed to be taken into consideration

C) List of reasons why some characters lose their tools whereas others keep those similar tools.

1) see #3 of A

2) Some people claim got more off their tools than others.

D ) Reasons certain characters have certain tools no one else has.

1) Poster character

2) Developer's favorite character

 

[Tanno]

When Paulo watches Sonicfox playing a certain character, he thinks that he's OP and starts nerfing him. When Paulo watches a casual playing some characters, but NOT the others, he thinks that the other characters need the luv and get buffed.

Hint: Watch TYM.

 

[TheGangstaFace]

I think our input barely means anything tbh. "Mileena is the best character in the game or at least top 3 FREE." Barely got touched along with Ermac. "Cyrax needs buffs!" Sektor gets buffs. Remember pre patch Summoner? "Summoner is broken!" Buffed him in the September patch

 

[Scott The Scot]

Nerfs and buffs are decided through a series of drinking games that all NRS employees take part in.

 

[TheGangstaFace]

Only reason Alien got the nerf hammer is cuz he was in every single top 8. And if it wasn't abundantly clear that he was busted by Sonic switching to him every time he was on his last leg then idk what else we could've done lol

 

[Dankster Morgan]

Going by mass audiences would determine who, but not necessarily how they go about it. I'm talking frame data changes for the most part despite some of my above examples. Why change something by X amount of frames that didn't need it and makes almost no difference, but then skip over something entirely that needed to be changed? The process behind the decision making is what boggles my mind the most.

Some of the more bitched about thinks iv seen on twitter and YouTube comments and the like are:
1. Kenshi's zoning (ass)
2. Erron Black's F13 speed (now ass)
3. Ice Klone not working right (very strong)
4. Zoning (not really a big thing, barring certain matchups)
5. Inferno Scorpion (he's dog shit)

That's what comes to mind immediately, I think the way these things are now is 100% deliberate.

 

[Lokheit]

Sometimes I think they intentionally go out of the way to buff a character in ways not proposed by the community, like if they think doing what the community claims would make them worse balancers or like if it would be admiting the players were right about something.

Examples that I'm the most familiar with would be pre-patch Unbreakable in 2 different instances: when they gave him "aura combos" creating a huge personality crisis instead of fixing it and later when he was given the enhanced aura slide with a huge damage scaling making it almost useless in that meta (it's only useful now because suddenly it's the only armored launcher in the game, but at the time it was conceived it didn't fix anything for UB, he only became a decent character when they finally heard the community and reduced the parry recovery plus the meta changes being great for him).

Or Cryomancer in the current meta, a character whose biggest flaw was one of the worst neutral toolsets in the game and instead of something like a string starting with the sword (F122 without the first hit for example) or making air hammer a ground pound or something similar so he could create some respect, they increased his mixup options that were already fine and NERFED his neutral tools (F12 no longer 0 on block, F42 cancel advantage butchered into the ground, for any experienced Cryo players those 2 were huge hits) so the character pros are bigger and his flaws are worse and now that the dust is settled he's nowhere near as good as everybody was claiming because you can abuse him even more now if your character has a decent neutral game. I'm still scratching my head about why he was buffed the way he was when it wasn't what he needed and at the end of the day, the increased options to open up your opponent aren't such a big deal when he already had decent options before and still sucked.

Those are the 2 cases that I'm the most familiar with, but I know they aren't the only cases where a character community was scratching their heads with some changes. Sometimes it worked out fine, but others it didn't.

 

[Bruno-NeoSpace]

The DOWNPLAYING is the thing that most causes stupid buffs and nerfs!!

Some of the more bitched about thinks iv seen on twitter and YouTube comments and the like are:
1. Kenshi's zoning (ass)
2. Erron Black's F13 speed (now ass)
3. Ice Klone not working right (very strong)
4. Zoning (not really a big thing, barring certain matchups)
5. Inferno Scorpion (he's dog shit)

That's what comes to mind immediately, I think the way these things are now is 100% deliberate.

Correcting: ''Some of the more bitched about thinks iv seen on twitter, YouTube AND TEST YOUR MIGHT''

 

[Dankster Morgan]

The DOWNPLAYING is the thing that most causes stupid buffs and nerfs!!



Correcting: ''Some of the more bitched about thinks iv seen on twitter, YouTube AND TEST YOUR MIGHT''

Is this me getting exposed or something? Is Tarkatan Alien not unsafe on literally everything with the some of if it the worst risk/reward in the game? Wtf

 

[TheGangstaFace]

Sometimes I think they intentionally go out of the way to buff a character in ways not proposed by the community, like if they think doing what the community claims would make them worse balancers or like if it would be admiting the players were right about something.

Examples that I'm the most familiar with would be pre-patch Unbreakable in 2 different instances: when they gave him "aura combos" creating a huge personality crisis instead of fixing it and later when he was given the enhanced aura slide with a huge damage scaling making it almost useless in that meta (it's only useful now because suddenly it's the only armored launcher in the game, but at the time it was conceived it didn't fix anything for UB, he only became a decent character when they finally heard the community and reduced the parry recovery plus the meta changes being great for him).

Or Cryomancer in the current meta, a character whose biggest flaw was one of the worst neutral toolsets in the game and instead of something like a string starting with the sword (F122 without the first hit for example) or making air hammer a ground pound or something similar so he could create some respect, they increased his mixup options that were already fine and NERFED his neutral tools (F12 no longer 0 on block, F42 cancel advantage butchered into the ground, for any experienced Cryo players those 2 were huge hits) so the character pros are bigger and his flaws are worse and now that the dust is settled he's nowhere near as good as everybody was claiming because you can abuse him even more now if your character has a decent neutral game. I'm still scratching my head about why he was buffed the way he was when it wasn't what he needed and at the end of the day, the increased options to open up your opponent aren't such a big deal when he already had decent options before and still sucked.

Those are the 2 cases that I'm the most familiar with, but I know they aren't the only cases where a character community was scratching their heads with some changes. Sometimes it worked out fine, but others it didn't.

I 100% agree with this. They definitely see how the community would buff or nerf a character and do their own thing which just makes me scratch my head of why we give any input at all

 

[Bruno-NeoSpace]

Is this me getting exposed or something? Is Tarkatan Alien not unsafe on literally everything with the some of if it the worst risk/reward in the game? Wtf

I'm sorry if it was very cocky by me but OMG dude...

 

[Dankster Morgan]

I'm sorry if it was very cocky by me but OMG dude...

Do you have anything constructive to say or anything to have a conversation about? Or is it just my opinion that bothers you?

 

[Bruno-NeoSpace]

Do you have anything constructive to say or anything to have a conversation about? Or is it just my opinion that bothers you?

It's not very much that your opinion bothers me... it's actually the whole hipocrisy and misinformations that I see here on TYM, Twitch, Twitter, Youtube...

 

[Dankster Morgan]

It's not very much that your opinion bothers me... it's actually the whole hipocrisy and misinformations that I see here on TYM, Twitch, Twitter, Youtube...

I don't see how that's really hypocrisy. Iv never downplayed a character I use. I didn't downplay Alien when I used him, I thought Tarkatan was number 2 in the game. I don't downplay SZ who is my actual main. Imo Tarkatan isn't useful now and my response to the guy asking if people think Alien is viable or not said just that- my opinion. Let's not talk about how I said Acidic and Konjurer are still good though, I'm a downplayer, remember.